EUSTIS — The managers of a tree-shaded mobile home park are trying to evict homeowners who are covering their front lawns with bulging trash bags to protest a new garbage collection fee.

The eviction suit is the latest maneuver in a battle that is shattering the easy-going routine of the mobile home park community. Nearly all the residents are retirees lured South by promises of year-round warmth from sun and neighbors. However, spats about garbage collection have torn the once-friendly neighborhood apart.

When former bridge partners now meet, they exchange cold stares and stalk by without saying hello. Protesters say that because of the controversy they sleep badly. ''Nobody speaks to us,'' said Howard Hoose, who has several trash bags piled up at his curb. ''They're all mad at us.''

For the past 1 1/2 months, bags of trash -- often decorated with plastic flowers and facetious signs -- have been collecting in front of the protesters' homes at Haselton Village along State Road 19-A. At issue is a $4 monthly fee for curbside garbage pickups that A. & M. Co., which took over the park in January, is requiring.

The 35 or so protesters refuse to pay the fee and say that garbage should be picked up from the curbs for free, as has long been the custom. Making homeowners pay a $4 garbage fee or hike to trash bins a half-mile from some areas of the park violates their leases, they say. They say they feel that tacking on a monthly fee is really a sneaky way to raise the rent.

Since May 1, when the new fee went into effect, garbage trucks have been driving by the homes of residents who will not pay. Trash bags keep piling up. Irwin Walker, a resident, is suing the managers for breaking a contract. About 35 other mobile home owners plan to join the suit, said the anti-fee group's attorney, Frank Gaylord. The 80 other mobile home owners in the park agreed without argument to pay the fee.

Ray Moats, president of A.&M. Management in Lakeland, said the company was steadily losing money on garbage collection.

The ever-increasing piles of trash are ugly, unsanitary and upsetting to other residents, said Ron Clark, the management company's attorney. It leaves them with no alternative but an eviction suit aimed at the protesters, he said. ''We're telling them to move it or move their house,'' said Clark. The eviction suit is currently aimed at Irvin and Kay Walker, the only protesters who have formally filed a lawsuit against the managers. If the other anti-fee folks join the Walkers in suit as they plan, A.&M. Management Inc. will include them in its eviction efforts, Clark said.

The anti-fee group says they are careful to keep the symbols of their protest, the bulging garbage bags, reasonably sanitary. Smelly garbage is being carried to the trash bin, they say. The trash bags on their lawns are stuffed with items that will not rot such as old newspapers and grass clippings.

Russ Melling, a Lake County environmental inspector, said he inspected the streets of Haselton Village every other day when the issue first came up in early May. The bags of trash posed no health hazard at the time, he said. The health department has received no complaints since then and doesn't plan to inspect the area again unless it does, he said.

The 80 homeowners who are quietly going along with the fee say they see nothing amusing in the trash bags accumulating on their neighbors' lawns and say the anti-fee group is just causing trouble. The owners have improved the property, fixing old water and sewage pipes and cleaning up a lake, said Ed Locke, vice president of the park's homeowners group.

To the protesters, an important principle is at stake. If the new managers are allowed to fiddle with their leases, the abuse could get worse later on, they say.

Lawyers for both sides agree that it will be several months before the suits are settled. Until they get what they want, the protesters say they will keep their trash bags out front as reminders of their point of view.

Meanwhile, residents say, the tension among them is getting worse. Proponents of the garbage fee say the protesters are junking up the lawns and making the retirement park look like a dumping grounds.

Even the protesters are sick of seeing garbage bags all over the place.

''I'm kind of getting tired of those bags sitting there, too,'' said Walker. ''But we're not going to move them until they honor our contract.''